Lost in Space
by Von Uriken
Summary: Kim and Shego wake in a different galaxy. The question is, can they work together to get back, or will they tear each other apart in the process? Kigo
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Yep, I'm working on a second story. I'm still doing Canadian Wedding though. The biggest difference between these two is that this one is written with the ending and plot firmly in mind, CW is going where it wants to. Also, if you've read both, you may notice this one being less introspective than the other. That will change, pretty much invert completely, through the next few chapters, for both stories most likely. Before I post though, I'd like to thank all the people who've read and reviewed Canadian Wedding. I do keep an eye on my stats too, all my stats, and I'm not particularly proud that I only had 250 page views Sunday, so I'd like to see if we can't pass Friday's 650, maybe shoot for somewhere around 800 too. I'm looking forward to seeing who wins on reviews as well, between this and Canadian Wedding. **~VLU~**

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*New **Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

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It was seven in the morning when the Possibles were asked to drive to Global Justice headquarters. Neither Anne nor James were given any idea what it was about, but when the one-eyed Doctor Director had mentioned Kim, the decision was made for them. Being Sunday too, they set off with little worry about work or their twins, and arrived just an hour and a half later.

The criminal departments in the mountainous military base never slept, with a small division for nearly every country, some taking care of several or more if they were small enough. The time zones mean that day or night, there was someone entering or exiting, determined to keep an eye on a populace thousands of miles away. More often than not, though, it was the divisions positioned to watch specific individuals that were most active, with Doctor Drakken's keepers taking up a large percentage of the entire Global Justice staff.

Even now, as Anne and James were buzzed through the gates, an entire line of logistics and spies were entering around them, and heading off to the various warehouses and labs spread throughout the base. The Possibles were herded off to the side, towards the tallest building. They'd both been there before though, and were already familiar with the six story hub of the international agency.

They were herded inside as soon as they parked, and slightly surprised to find none other than Doctor Betty Director waiting for them. She was standing in the main lobby, looking out the windows as they came in, with her usual rugged stance and hands laced behind her back.

"Mister and Missus Possible," She said as a greeting, nodding slightly as they approached. Both the parents could tell she was more of a introspective warrior, rather than the people person Global Justice made her out to be.

"Doctor Director," James replied. "You said this had to do with Kimmie? She hasn't been causing you any trouble, has she?" His tone was stern but humorous, promising a comical reaction to his daughter actually being in trouble. It did little to lighten Betty's mood though.

"No, at least not yet. Walk with me." With that she headed outside, back into the brisk Colorado air. The trio turned, and headed towards the mountain that lay at the edge of the complex, with more buildings built inside it. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you more on the phone, but I don't trust public lines with this information."

Anne pursed her lips and shook her head. "Well, Kim's friend, Wade, already worked on all the phones in our house. We would have liked to know what happened before you drug us out here."

"As much as I respect Wade's work, Drakken has worked around him before, and I wouldn't be surprised if he could do it again." Betty said as they walked. "And we figure he would have a reason to be interested, if this really is his work."

That caught James' attention. "If what really is his work?"

Betty looked like she had wanted to work around this conversation, or at least not be having it so soon. She looked away and scratched the back of her neck uncomfortably. "Something during Kim's last checkup tripped our scanners."

"Her last checkup? It isn't biological, is it?" Anne asked wearily.

"Not specifically. We found small biomachines implanted inside her head." She explained, leading them inside the largest building built straight into the mountain's face. The inside was the same beige walls that all Global Justice buildings sported, complete with GJ logos dotting the corridors. It was longer though, and lead past three guard stations to an elevator, with no other turnoffs in sight. "At first they were silent, and the physicals never picked them up, but over the last few days they've been emitting a strange electrical field inside her brain."

The Possibles were silent, both digesting the news in their own way. Betty was thankful for that, the reprieve from explaining as she flashed her identification to each of the guards, swiping it through the small machines built into the sides of the posts. Finally, she ended up with an optical and fingerprint scan, and the three headed into the elevator, and down into the earth.

"I assume you brought us here to show us, not just talk and leave us hanging?" James asked as they rode down, receiving no response. "As a brain surgeon and a rocket scientist, an engineer at that, we would be very angry if there was something we could do-"

"You can see her, yes. All our scientists haven't been able to identify it, but if you can it would be greatly appreciated."

"That's good, thank you, Betty." Anne said, having been silent almost the entire way to quell the feeling of dread she was facing. Being an accomplished brain surgeon, and knowing full well how easy one was to damage, she was more and more worried about what could happen to Kim. If the field the biomachines were releasing did something to harm her brainwaves, dying was the least of her problems.

Betty nodded silently, and held back as the elevator doors open. "She's in observation five-A, head down the hall until you see the 'A' overhead and turn right. Five should be on the left just a bit down." She stepped out of the elevator, but continued to hold, waiting for them to leave.

"You're not coming with us, Betty?" Anne asked.

Betty shook her head. "No, there are some more- That is, there are some prisoners I have to check up on while I'm down here."

Both of the Possibles shot each other silent looks, their eyes filled with questions only they could understand. They had caught Doctor Director's slipup, but chose to keep their mouths shut, and headed down the hallway following her instructions.

Ward A was easy enough to find, and entering it gave Anne the sense that it was a high security hospital. The doors, though sporting the same crème color scheme, were all doubly reinforced, and many of the windows high up on them seemed to be bullet proof. Guards idled about as well, while even the Doctors seemed to fit to be in their field, most likely all having served in the military, or GJ itself, before applying.

Observation Five was similar to many of the surgery rooms Anne had been in before, or at least the observation room outside it. The biggest difference was that instead of the machines being in the surgery room, it was all waiting out, presumably across a bullet-proof one-way mirror from the person being observed. Readouts were plugged into many scanners that Anne had never witnessed in action before, some capable of reading Kim's heart rate without so much as touching her, while others kept a continuous scan of her brainwaves.

Despite all the technology surrounding the one-way mirror, both Possible's felt their eyes automatically drawn to the person on the other side of it. Neither could escape the sudden lump in their throat, or the painful tug that resonated in their hearts.

Sitting alone, huddled into the corner of a bland yet modern cell, was their daughter, Kim Possible. She had her knees drawn up to her chest, and her head resting atop them. It was the stance of a scared child, hiding from monsters in her closet, only her arms and legs were shackled together with thick chains, and her face bore a exhausted and empty expression.

"Kim, what have they done to you?" Anne whispered to herself.

"We haven't done anything, this was the way she was brought in." Both Possibles whirled around at the sudden voice behind them, to find a middle-aged doctor in a lab coat standing suavely at the door. He had entered the room silently, to silently to have opened the door right behind Anne. "From the looks of it, the machines inside her brain are fighting with her personality, which is why she appears so exhausted. One of them is always trying to one-up the other, whenever the EEGs show her beta or gamma waves falling and an increase in alpha, theta, or delta waves, the signal from the machines will spike."

"So, it's not letting her sleep?" Anne asked, absorbing the information as she looked over her daughter once more, then across to the readouts about the room.

James didn't have a part in the conversation, and had been looking about the room curiously, keeping one eye on his daughter most the time. He'd found a screen that did interest him though, information extracted from the various tests Kim must have been put through over the night. One specific set detailed as much as they could about the machines.

"Do you think it's trying to replace her brain waves with something else's?" Anne asked as she studied the charts.

The doctor, now standing beside her, nodded. "It's possible, at least for a device this advanced. It's not possible for any of our current technology though, and I don't know what we could do to stop it without damaging her in the process."

Anne chewed on her lip for several moments. "So these signals are emulating brain waves?" Her only response was another nod. "How is she holding up then? Is there any clear sign if she's winning against them?"

The doctor opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "I can't say for sure. But the machines are hitting her consistently, and we still have no idea what will happen when she does fall asleep."

Anne nodded, still chewing her lip thoughtfully. James rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she turned to look him in the face, pain apparent in her eyes. "Then, I guess we're going to have to get to work." He told them, handing her a file he had found in his browsing.

It was almost an hour later when Betty finally finished her rounds of the other prisoners, various misfits, villains, and mutants that needed Global Justice's unique care. Her first stop was the Possibles in A-Five, where she found them, and the head scientist on the Possible case, all crowding a table that hadn't been there when she checked last. Various files lay scattered across the table, but a cursory glance told her than most of the brain scans and the synthetic waves lay piled on Anne's side of the table, while the scans of the devices themselves lay on James' side.

Zarkov, the Global Justice scientist, had a mixed scattering of the two, and was spending most of his time translating between the rocket scientist and the brain surgeon. In just a short hour, James had learned more about the brain than he had in college, and Anne had learned more about nanobots than she'd ever wanted to.

"Any progress?" Betty asked as she entered, standing off to the side of the three.

James was the one to look up first, pursing his lips and shaking his head. "Not yet, but there's something about these biomachines."

"Like what?" She asked, with her eyebrow raised.

"I don't know yet, but I've seen something exactly like this before. You have to understand, these are all from medical scanners, nothing like we use at our labs."

Anne had a similarly distraught look on her face, but the Possibles' never-give-up attitude was shining through. "I've never seen anything like them, and I don't know what we could do about it. They're all so small, and placed everywhere around the brain. To perform surgery and filter them all, we'd have to remove her brain from her skull." She adopted a disgusted look at that, still looking down at the brain scans. "And probably remove her head while we're at it."

Kim was still in the same position she had been when Betty checked up on her nearly four hours ago, huddled away in the corner. She stood at the mirror now, looking across and down at the young girl, who had, just weeks ago, still fought to save the world under Betty's watchful gaze.

"So we really just have one option then?" Betty asked the three behind her, all of whom shot her curious glances. "Find the people who're doing this to her."

All three nodded, and James spoke up, "Do you have any leads?"

"Doctor Drew Lipsky," She stated, straight to the point for once. "We first started noticing odd results to her physicals when she returned from that mission, three months ago. I had my physicians make sure going into space at short notice, and down again, hadn't had any adverse effects on her body."

"But?" Anne asked, curious to just what the Director was keeping from them.

"But suddenly she spoke Spanish, and couldn't remember learning it." That caught the attention of all present, none of whom were even aware she had known it.

The intercom piped in, a mechanical, nearly distorted voice, that came from the room adjoined to theirs. "Ah, my head…" Kim muttered, reaching up to rub her eyebrows.

"Kimmie?" Anne muttered. A quick glance at the EEG machines told her than the process Zarkov had told them about was starting up again. Brief spikes of brain waves covered her own, distorting the image until very few scanners could tell where Kim ended and the machines began. The young woman in question seemed to physically pale at every spike, reaching up to cover more and more of her head, and block out the light.

"Shut up!" She shouted. Her eyes were scrunched though, and neither parent had mentioned themselves being there the entire time. Kim had seemed to out of sorts for their company.

"Betty, I need to get in there and take care of my daughter." Anne told the other doctor, standing up from her seat for the first time in an hour.

Betty shook her head. "I'm sorry, but it's too dangerous. What if it is some sort of mind control from Doctor Drakken?"

"That's just a risk I'll have to take." Anne argued, though Betty just continued to shake her head. "There's no way I'm going to be able to convince you, is there?"

"Nope." She responded simply.

"Alright then, I didn't want to have to do this though. James, open the door." With that said, the distraught mother moved towards the observation room door, while James took to the keypad in front of it. The device was from the world's most technologically advanced agency, but even Betty had no doubts the eldest Possible could open it with little trouble.

"Now hold on just a minute," Betty growled. She jumped in front of the doorway, blocking off Anne as she approached.

Anne took two more steps towards her, walking calmly. Two seconds later, Betty found herself lying face-first on the floor, and looked dazedly up to where the redhead was passing her, walking more briskly to where her daughter was thrashing against the wall.

"What the hell was that?" Betty muttered.

Zarkov snorted down at his boss, amusement covering his face. "You got your ass kicked."

James, having cracked the keypad in the time it took Anne to walk across the room, just looked sympathetically down at the woman. "Most of us have learned not to stand in her way, as long as our children are involved that is."

Anne was doing her best to assist her daughter, helping her down, and making her as comfortable as possible. But since the object causing her Pain was less than microscopic, and located around her brain, there was little she could do but fret.

"Kimmie? It's going to be okay, just focus on your breathing, your meditation." The older Possible cooed, massaging her hand while she flicked damp red locks out of her daughter's eyes.

"Mom?" Kim called. She seemed to just realize that the woman was there, and seemed almost disturbed by her presence. "What're you doing here? I'm going to fly into the sun soon, you know. It's to dangerous to be here."

"It's okay, Kim, you're just having a dream." She replied, tears streaking her eyes now. Her daughter, now that she was closer, didn't look half as good as she had hoped. The hollow stare she gave didn't look at her, but straight past her, as if into another galaxy. Her skin was milky white, lacking blood in her face, with sickly rings surrounding her eyes.

"A dream? So Shego's okay?" That gave her a small and happy smile. "Good, I didn't want to go back anyway."

"Back, Kimmie? Back where?" Anne asked.

"Back home. Back," Kim's eyes drifted back into her head, letting off a small yawn, "To Earth." And with that, she fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Sorry for the wait, ladies and gentlemen. The current chapters of LS and CW were harder to write than the last two, mainly because I wrote sections that didn't appeal to me. This is the revised version, sans fight sceen that I felt was unneeded. Introduced is the third main character in LS, behind just Kim and Shego, Janice. Next chapter will finally explain the setting for a majority of this fic, which many people seem to be confused about. My apologies on that. **~VLU**

**Edit:** Before I forget, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed my works thus far. Top among them is Demented Noodles, perhaps my biggest and only fan, as well as PoetHeather and Ken-Zero, all of whom have reviewed both fics, and multiple chapters at that. I'll attempt to reply to as many reviews as I can when I wake myself up. Once more, **~VLU**

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**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

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Ron had been called in several hours later at the Possibles' request. When he arrived, he was ushered down into a different section of the mountainous prison, ending up in the intensive care unit rather than observation.

Kim was strapped down to a hospital bed when he arrived, her heavy shackles tethered to the ground to keep her in place. Despite the heavy restraints though, she was deathly still, though her breath was under her own power. Emergency equipment lay scattered across the room. Anne assured him it was just incase. It wasn't her body they were worried about, besides the lack of sleep Kim had been suffering from, her training regiment had become even more intense over the last three months, showing new skills every so often. Even her reflexes had practically doubled.

Her head, and brainwaves in specific, were the most worrisome part of the teen now. Since she had fallen asleep, the synthetic waves had doubled, and it was almost impossible to sift through them to find the slightest inkling their daughter was still alive at all.

"I should have known something was wrong," Ron muttered. Not being able to help was hardest on him, since everyone around him, besides Doctor Director, were experts at their field and doing whatever they could for her. Even James was looking up possible leads on the equipment inside of her. Ron was the only one without a fancy degree there, and felt like he was letting his best friend down when she needed him the most.

Anne came up behind him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, much as her husband had done for her. "There was no way to know anything like this would happen, Ron. You just have to be ready, in case they find how what's causing this."

He nodded and gave her his best determined expression. "Of course, Doctor Missus P., I'm ready to roll out whenever."

"She's moving." Betty said from behind her, displaying none of the emotions of worry that was plaguing the rest of the crew.

Everyone in hearing range turned their heads, finding that Kim was in fact stirring in the bed. Anne did a quick checkup on the readouts, but frowned at the realization that the synthetic waves had practically erased her daughter's already. "Ron, go and stay with her. We need to keep working."

"You got it, Doc." He said, nodding again. Not even noticing the grumbling glower Betty shot his way, he slipped inside the adjoining room, taking one of the two seats next to Kim's bare hospital bed.

She had been cut out of her mission clothes some time ago, now dressed in plain hospital garbs. The sunken look to her face had eased somewhat during her rest though, but her brows were furrowed, and her expression was more distraught then ever. Whether it was that made Kim seem so bothered, or whatever was inside her head, was someone else's guess.

"KP?" Ron asked, gently touching her hand. "I know you probably can't hear me, but I'm here for you."

He got an unintelligible grumble as a response, at first. The teen bucked uncomfortable, arms tensing in their straps. Her mouth was open, as if to speak, but her eyes were still squeezed shut. Ron couldn't tell if she were waking up, or just having a bad dream.

"No…" He guessed bad dream though when she muttered her first word to him. He could see the slightest hint of tears springing forth from her eyelids as well. "I don't- I don't want to die…"

"KP? It's okay, I'm here. Nothing's going to happen," He assured her. Nothing seemed to be getting through to her though. She strained against the restraints once more, arms moving like she was fighting to get out.

He leaned in, face still full of worry, only to jump back suddenly as she shrieked at the top of her lungs, "I don't want to die! Not like this, Shego!" As soon as she'd started, and Anne and Betty both ended up in the doorway, her fit settled down. She rested back in her bed, eyes still closed, and continued to push against the restraints. "Shego… You said you'd catch me. You said so. I can't see, I can't move. It's so dark. Please…"

"Kim," Ron whispered, cutting through her whispered pleas, "It's okay. I'm here, I won't let you die. It's okay."

"It's okay?" The response caught him off guard. He opened his tear filled eyes to find hers staring right back at him, olive green eyes mirroring his brown. The slightly shimmering look to her eyes was full of hope, and Ron felt his heart swell at that. Even her lips had a slight upward tug to them, almost a tired smile.

"It's okay," Ron assured her once more.

And then her face fell, and she looked Ron over. "You're not Shego."

"It's me, Kim. It's Ron." She turned away as he spoke, ignoring him altogether. Her gaze, though extremely dazed still, crossed the entire room, finding it empty after Anne and Betty had left. "Um, I think someone should get in here." He called out the door, his instincts telling him something bad was about to happen. When he turned back, her hand arched through the air, coming just inches short of catching him by the windpipe.

"Where is she?!" She screamed as Ron jumped back. Her flailing grip came up just short of anything useful, even of the chair beside the bed. "Shego!" With little other options though, she settled for bucking wildly against the restraints, lifting her back all the way against the bed before slamming it down again. That caught the attention of everyone outside, who rushed in one by one.

"Kim, it's okay. Just calm down." Even as Ron tried to calm her, another one of her strikes just barely missed his head.

She arched her back once more, pulling as hard as she could against the restraints, not up, but parallel with the bed, towards her head. Her wrists seemed to contort, shrinking more and more to squeeze into the tiny cuffs and out the other side.

With little other options, Ron jumped on the bed with her, gripping her wrists with his own vice-like grip. Her muscles were like iron, but Ron was no pushover after years of fighting by her side. Her bucking increased with the weight on her though, and several times Ron found himself flying into the air.

"Kim, calm down!" He shouted as her knees drove into his back.

"Where is she? I need to find her," Growled Kim, her eyes locking his with a feral glare. Her mind was still sharp, despite the occasional grimace of pain from it, and she noticed two more figures entering the room before Ron did.

Zarkov headed immediately for the nitrous oxide machine in the back corner of the room, while Betty took her firm stance in the doorway. Both let Ron do his job without interfering, though Zarkov kept his eyes on the teen's head while he was prepping the 'happy gas'.

Kim, on the other hand, was quickly losing patience. She let out a frustrated growl, which turned almost to a whine. "Please, I need to help her." The tears in her eyes were getting to Ron more than her pleas. "If I don't do this, she'll die."

"It's okay, Kim," Ron whispered firmly, glancing up just momentarily as Zarkov brought the gas mask, complete with long collapsible tube, towards her. "She's okay, just calm down."

Her look was of quiet anger, frustrated to the point of tears. She kept her gaze on him, never glancing towards the scientist behind her, and shook her head. "Take me to Shego, or else…" She warned.

The gas mask clasped over her face, with the hand holding it well firm enough to allow for violent maneuvers. Zarkov was expecting her to rear at the suddenness of it, he wasn't expecting her to buck her hips hard enough to send Ron into the man's face though.

Her strength, well enough to take on men twice her size, had been reserved for a time to take down two birds with one stone. As both of them collapsed into a pile at the head of her bed, Kim quickly slipped her hands out of the cuffs, dislocating her thumbs for just seconds.

Betty never made it to the bed before she'd already detached the thick leather straps around her ankles. The older woman ended up clutching the bed sheets instead, while Kim had already slipped out and made it to the door in two strides. The one thing she hadn't expected was the woman standing behind the door, waiting for her to run past, with a needle full of sedatives.

Kim felt it as just a sharp prick against her arm, but knew full well that she'd been caught. Before the doctor who had ambushed her could so much as pull her arm back, Kim had her wrist in an iron grip.

"Kim, this is for your own good." Anne said, voice hushed against the backdrop of medical machines. She was afraid, and her expression stated that clearly. She'd never even thought she could be afraid of her own daughter, but the fear she felt when Kim turned that feral snarl on her was plain as day.

The needle clattered to the ground as her free arm flicked it away. The same arm riled back, ready to take the doctor, whom she couldn't seem to realize was her own mother, out in one shot.

It never made it to it's intended target though. Another, even firmer grip, covered it, while a second hand gripped her throat tightly. She was shoved roughly backwards, hitting the wall behind her hard enough to back a blackboard in the observation room clatter to the ground. A television, somewhere above her head, flicked on with a burst of static.

Kim let her free hand gingerly touch where her head had hit the wall, feeling a sharp sting as they came in contact with a fresh wound. Her vision had already blurred when the sedatives had flooded her bloodstream, and now crossed one over another. Looking up, she saw no less than four similar doctors standing inside each other.

The same determination that had got her here wouldn't let up though, and she gripped the hand over hers with her free one. She turned her glare towards her newest attacker and gasped, before the encroaching darkness that surrounded her vision claimed her.

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Memories danced through the confines of her psyche, now empty of all waking thoughts, and still void of dreams. Many that lasted well past her lifetime, while others were so simple she was completely surprised she had forgotten them at all. The images were few at first, but as her mind finally bloomed, and the familiar pain of her headache assaulted her once more, they grew into a rising cascade of her life.

Her first memory, which appeared first as a fuzzy picture, before clearing bit by bit, was of nearly three months ago. The convertible top had been slid back on the Sloth, Kim's upgraded Roth SL Coupe, which was cruising through Middleton at a respectable forty-five. Ron and her had been informed of a mission just minutes ago, with Wade, thankfully and surprisingly, giving them the full details up front. The only problem was that their transportation was still being prepped, so neither of them were in any hurry to get there.

"I still can't believe your dad is letting you borrow a spaceship." Wade said from the dashboard sleeve the kimmunicator was plugged into.

Ron nodded in agreement. "Yeah, you want to explain how, exactly, you managed to talk him into this one?"

"Look, we're not borrowing a spaceship. My dad's assistant is just going to take it up, drop us off, then take us back down again." Her eyes were focused on the road, but her voice had a annoyed huff to it. The two of them had been asking her the same question since she got her father to agree. "And honestly, we don't have much choice. The Sloth isn't equipped to make it that far, and there's no way NASA's shuttles could get us there in that time."

Ron and Wade nodded this time, but it was Ron who spoke up first, "Why are we doing this, again?"

"You want me to give you a rundown on what's happening?" Wade asked. He received a nod from both people concerned. "Okay. Just thirty minutes ago, the International Space Station sent out a call for assistance, saying that an unidentified craft had just entered their radar."

"Doctor Drakken," Kim answered, lips pursed into a thin scowl.

"Yep. Drakken and Shego have since boarded, and are currently trying to break the locks on the station's labs. Inside is a prototype drive core-"

"Drive core?" This was from Ron, who looked rather confused.

"It's a prototype power generator that is supposed to be able to open holes in time and space. Kim's dad was working on it as a possibility for intergalactic travel." Wade explained.

Ron nodded and hmm'ed as he spoke. "And Drakken traveling to a different galaxy is bad, why?"

"Because if there really is enough power in that generator to tear a whole in space and time, it could potentially threaten all life as we know it."

"Yeah, Ron," Kim added, "If Drakken gets a hold of this, what's to say he won't send you to a different galaxy?"

"Point taken," Ron relented, before perking up. "Hey, there's the space center." He added, pointing up the bend in the road, and over the hill they were driving next to.

The little purple car drove along, finally revealing the massive structure that her father worked at during the weekdays. What was much more exciting than the building both occupants of the car had seen a hundred times over, was what was parked behind it. "And that must be the spaceship."

"That's not the rocket we rode last time," Was Ron's unneeded comment. He frowned as he looked at the shape of the spaceship, an oval hull shaped more like an egg, though flatter on the top and bottom, than any rocket he had ever seen. There was something familiar about it though, but he couldn't quite piece it together yet. Kim was more interested in where exactly the rocket was on it, since it didn't seem to have any thrusters she had ever seen before. Instead, the back was lined by several exhausts, with a quartet of larger rounded exhausts in the back, and perhaps dozens of smaller and flatter ones sticking out from along different points in the rest of the hull.

"Hey, awesome!" Ron shouted as they approached it. He finally seemed to have remember what it was he was thinking of. "We get to ride the ship from Lost in Space!"

"That must be the prototype ship Doctor Possible was working on with the European Agencies," Wade explained as they approached. Not only was its shape smooth and rounded though, as they got closer to it they got more of a feeling as to just how big it was. It practically dwarfed the first several buildings in the space center, seeming to be some four stories tall, and twice that long.

As the Sloth pulled up to the parking lot, several men, armed and wearing security uniforms, waved them through towards the employee gate. Kim pulled up, and stopped the car next to the first man.

"Miss Possible, I presume?" The guard asked.

She reached into her purse, pulling out the employee id her father had made for her. "Yep. My dad told me to meet someone named Harper here? Is he around?"

"Just inside, he'll be waiting under Janice." The guard informed them, nodding first to them, then his teammates. They weren't the only ones around, several more teams of guards, well over a dozen in all, stood about on opposite sides of the massive craft.

"They're pulling out all the stops for this one," Ron commented as they were buzzed through. "You notice the army truck parked down the road?"

"Mm-hmm, there are about twenty more guards waiting in the lobby there," Kim replied. Ron turned towards the building, but didn't see quite what Kim was talking about. She had a way with sizing up potential threats that he never understood though.

Kim pulled into the employee parking lot, parking well away from the ship that took up a majority of the lot. They exited the sloth, letting the top slide back up and the windows pull up and lock as it went into its lockdown mode. Waiting for the blonde and the redhead under the ship was a single man, standing about idly, though he occasionally shot weary glances at the guards mulling about. He was short, well shorter than Ron, with spiked blonde hair and a undistinguished lab coat. His slightly beady blue eyes lay low on his head, just above a slightly oversized nose and upturned mouth, which quirked sporadically as the two approached.

"Hi, Doctor Harper?" Kim asked, offering her hand to the odd little scientist.

Harper nodded. Instead of taking the hand, he pulled out a remote and pointed it up, pressing a button that commanded a tube to drop from the bottom of the craft. From inside, a ladder slid down, ending up just a foot off the ground at Harper's side.

"'Tis I. I'll just assume you've heard of me?" He said, sizing Ron up with one glance, then twitching back from Kim with another.

Ron and Kim shared a glance between each other, before turning their gaze back to the little man. "Yeah, my dad said you would be giving us a ride to the space station. He said you were his assistant on this project?"

That seemed to rile several of Harper's buttons, and he blustered visibly, no longer showing the nervous twitches but instead a cocky and insulted glare. "Assistant? He may have made the hull, but I built Janice from the ground up. I even taught her to smile."

"Janice?" Ron asked, before backing up as Harper shot him a look.

"Yep, Janice Zelazny Harper, artificial intelligence for the J-N-S dash E." His angry fit passed as quickly as it came, and without another look he took to the ladder, climbing up almost to fast for Kim and Ron to follow him.

"The software on this baby? I built it. Engines? That was me. Half the drive core would have been a jumbled mess if old man Possible didn't bring me in." Kim and Ron emerged into the bottom of an airlock, where Harper was already keying a code into the keypad. "Security systems were designed by Global Justice, some fancy new locks they're putting into their bases. Everything else, that was me."

The keypad beeped under his fingers, the light over it flashing green. Instead of opening the door, the corners around the three hissed, and the bottom hatch whirred as the door beneath them closed and the ladder retracted. Kim had been in all manner of secret and high-tech facilities, but being closed in a tiny room she knew was going to fill with sanitizing gas wasn't her idea of fun.

But, it had to happen, so she closed her eyes and tilted her head as the sprayers around them started, shooting a thin foam throughout the room, before blowing it away with an overhead fan. Ron snorted and wiped his eyes.

"That was it?" He asked, waiting for round two.

Harper shrugged, pressing a final button that slid the door apart, and out of their way. "Janice scans everyone who boards. If you're clean enough, she gives you a little shower." He suavely walked and talked, exiting the little airlock and entering what looked to be a living room, or a lobby. It was two stories tall, shaped like a Y, with one door flanked by two corridors, and a ladder right above it leading to a balcony on the upper floor. Across from that, and up a ornately raised deck, was a smaller arch that seemed to lead to a cockpit. Surrounding either side of that exit were more ladders, both leading up to a walkway high above their heads that held three chairs complete with consoles, two on either side, and one in the center.

"Now, here we have the lobby." Harper started, pointing to their feet. He talked smoothly, but still jittered when he was idle. "Up there," He continued, pointing up the ladder that ran above the center door, "Is the arboretum. Fully functioning, state of the art, yadda, yadda. Just add seeds and water. It can feed a crew of six as long as they keep it spiffy." Now he pointed to the center door. "In there is the mess hall and the gym," Then around the Y to the right, "That one leads up to the crew quarters," And around the Y to the left, "And that one leads down to the engine room and the core."

He wasn't headed any of those ways, though, instead walking towards the front of the ship, the bottom of the Y. "And here's my seat, the cockpit." Ron and Harper both muffled their laughter at that, though Kim just rolled her eyes. "Up there," He said, pointing above his head, "Is the copilot and the workstations, that's where you'll be riding."

"Ah, man, I hate ladders. Couldn't you have put in an escalator or something?" He whined.

Kim pursed her lips, taking the ladder on the right as they made their way to the workstations. "Well, as soon as we get into orbit, we shouldn't have to worry about them anyway."

Ron brightened at that. Harper clicked his tongue. "No such luck. Thanks to the drive core, Janice's belly is made of energized gravity plating. We leave the atmosphere, you won't notice the difference. Until you get on NASA's billion-dollar scaffolding, that is."

"Gravity plating?" Ron asked, sitting down at the left console. "Isn't that from Space Passage?"

Kim took her seat on the center of the catwalk, a seat nearly twice the size of the other two up there. Instead of the various readouts and cameras on the few screens around Ron, it had over a dozen different monitors suspended in the air around her, ranging from a in depth layout of Janice at her feet, to what looked like a security monitor above one of her shoulders.

"You'd be surprised how much of our technology comes from Space Passage. Our cell phones, music software, tinted glasses, everything!" Harper called back from below. "Don't touch anything up there, I've got eyes in the back of my head you know." His last sentence was filtered through the small microphone above his seat, coming from a speaker somewhere above Kim's head.

"Lady and gentleman, make sure your trays are in the upright and locked position. We will be taking off in five, four-" Harper paused, then leaned over to look out the window. "Oh wait, forgot to tell the guards to clear the area." He whistled innocently. "That would have been messy."

While the short scientist radioed down to the ground, Kim and Ron both occupied themselves without the scenery around them. Through the domed windows surrounding the four posts, pilot, copilot, and twin workstations, they could see all the way into downtown Middleton. Blue skies filled the top of their view, sun shining somewhere far overhead. There wasn't a cloud in sight.

"We're lucky it's such a nice day," Kim commented through her own microphone, "Wouldn't want to be late for Drakken's newest plot."

"Bah, Janice could take whatever weather Earth sends at her. Now, where was I? Right." Harper flicked a few switches down at his console, many attached to the flat screen monitors that surrounded him on their swivel arms, though few were actually attached to the walls around him that served as a backbone for the upper catwalks.

"One, liftoff." One lever he pulled seemed to control the ship's height, rising quickly above the building as he moved it towards him. "Hover mode, check. Janice, give me a flight path on screen two."

"Confirmed," A voice echoed beneath Kim, "Calculating path." It was feminine, yet possessed an unmistakable mechanical accent. "Path calculated, displaying."

Harper had busied himself with the multiple readouts across his many screens, which seemed to be mirrored across Kim's as well. She could hear him muttering under his breath, over the onboard communications, and could spot the occasional number he recited. Some were easy enough to understand, the percentage of power, which seemed to be totaled from five different power supplies, the lift and thrust, and the hull integrity. One she didn't quite understand was the ticker centered above her head, which counted backwards, but had no other information around it. It was just black numbers flipping over on a white background, one after another.

"Alright, next stop, NASA's beautiful P-O-S." Harper called as they rose.

Janice's nose lifted to the sky, light blue flames shooting out the quad exhausts in her back. She was already high above the building, having risen on the lower exhausts which controlled her left, but the sudden force of the thrusters knocked the leaves from the trees around the parking lot. Her lifts had left four separate scorch marks far below her in the same fashion.

Now she flew gracefully, swinging from side to side as Harper saw fit, bursting through the only cloud in the sky simply for her pilot's amusement. It left its own unique trail, a curled tendril of raindrops that pointed it out in the sky, as well as a sudden sheen to their windows as they exited the protective layers of the atmosphere. Harper flicked a switch down at his seat, and an almost comically complicated quartet of arms popped out on the domes above them, wiping the water away with the simple squeegees attached.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** I'd like to thank everyone who read and reviewed. Also, Canadian Wedding, the chapter I published just a while ago, reached 800 views! Now it's time to go for 1000. And, I'm sorry for the lack of updates for the past week. My current fic-load has gone from these two, to three and a half. I will still be updating Canadian Wedding and Lost in Space regularly though. All criticism and opinions are welcomed, so feel free to read and review. **~VLU**

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**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

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Janice was holding, high above the earth, facing the space station that orbited just miles away. She was watching patiently as Ron finished climbing into the bulky spacesuit NASA had provided, while Kim sat idly at one of the two workstations flanking the copilot's.

"So, I just scroll this around like this?" Kim asked through a pure oxygen facemask. She was moving a rounded ball that was built into the console's control pad, built beside the many back-lighted keys that seemed to change with every screen she clicked on.

Harper, still far below her and twitching nervously as he waited, was watching one of his own screens that mirrored hers. He watched the mouse scroll shakily, slowly overcoming the icon that he'd told her about. "Yeah, just click that one, then type in your location. It should sync automatically with the G-P-S around us."

"Spankin'." She called as she followed his instructions. It took another minute or so, where the silence was broken by Ron stumbling through the door with one leg in his pants, before apologizing and returning to the mess hall. He didn't like NASA suits, they were a pain that could take hours just to get in. But according to Harper, the wonderful GJ armory had managed to send them nothing but female versions of their latest space suit. Not just one set either, but an entire crate of them that had ended up packed in the supply room behind the arboretum.

Soon enough Harper was watching the shaky mouse covering the icon and activating it with a double-click. The search form it brought up was just a text bar, with buttons for manual and automatic beneath it. Kim entered the address of her house, taking what seemed like forever to type it out on the keyboard at the station, at least to Harper.

"And then it's that 'manual' button, right?" She asked. Instead of answering, the mouse on her screen moved and clicked the 'automatic' button by itself. Harper either figured they were taking to long, or was tired of watching her take forever to activate the unique controls. The control pads weren't made of the regular polymers, instead they seemed to be softer rubber, with buttons that seemed to be just the slightest nubs beneath them, lighted from beneath to display what key they were set too. The mouse seemed inverted as well, just a ball with two large buttons underneath.

The screen, when she looked up, was a picture of the earth beneath them, which had zoomed to the point of cloud cover. What seemed to be a translucent grid was covering the ground beneath it, she could guess it was either inlays from the satellites, or a way of memorizing landmarks to the computer. The image morphed once, displaying a regional view from high above that seemed to have Middleton centered in it, or at least what she could see of it, and one more time to bring her to city level.

The rest of the changes to the image were gradual, moving just meter by meter, until Kim could point out the different houses on her street. At the end, she could make out the different tiles to her home. Her dad was mowing the lawn out in the front of the house, most likely whistling a happy tune that would have driven her insane when it got stuck in her head. Behind the house, Jim and Tim were both sitting around a home-built launch pad she had seen briefly the day before.

"Wow," She muttered, practically speechless. It wasn't every day you could stand on a spaceship and look down on your family from the sky. "And you can save this?"

"Oh yeah, no problem." Harper said, tapping on his own keyboard below her. She looked away briefly as Ron came out of the mess hall, now completely covered by a bulky silver spacesuit. "In fact, I'll put it right in 'my pictures', and give it to old man Possible when we get back."

"Ready, KP!" Ron shouted. He sounded muffled beneath the massive domed helmet. His arms and legs looked more like those from Robbie the Robot than she'd expected too, and she had to stifle a giggle.

"Alright, Ron, just give me a second to put on my helmet and air tank." She called.

Ron glanced up, as high as the stiff back support of the suit would allow him, and watched as Kim jumped from her seat and slid gracefully down the ladder. "You don't got those on yet? Aren't we going to be late?"

"It's no big, just a few seconds is all." She replied. Laying on the ground next to the airlock was her helmet and air pack. The helmet was practically half the size of Ron's, with a rounded visor in the front, a sloped mouthpiece beneath it, and sloping sides that ended in a sleek stem. Even the air pack was less than half the size of Ron's. Harper assured her it held more air though, and she didn't have to worry as long as she wasn't planning to spend the week on the moon.

"Aw, how come I have to get this inflated marshmallow again? I couldn't even fit Rufus in here…"

Kim dressed through Ron's whining, standing just seconds later fully equipped. "Don't worry, Harper promised to watch him anyway. And you remember what happened when you tried to put one of these on." She reminded him. Off at the pilot's chair, Harper waved. Rufus, still sleeping in the cup holder at its side, lifted a hand in response.

"Alright, I'll drop you guys off a bit farther." He gripped the controls, pushing the throttle down just a notch to get Janice moving. "Remember where we're parking?"

"Opposite side as Drakken's fancy hovercraft?" Ron answered.

Both of them nodded, with Harper returning to his controls, and Kim finally finishing with the last air hose, now with two plugged into either side of her helmet's mouthpiece. "Okay, check my suit?" She asked.

Ron fumbled with his hands, first pulling at the two hoses at her mouth, then various parts of her suit as she turned in a circle. It almost seemed like she was modeling for him, in some sort of latex catsuit. "All green, KP. Got a green light on mine too. You ready?" She nodded, and they both took a step back towards the airlock.

The two of them, both turning towards Harper, gave him a thumbs up, and he began to type randomly on his keypad. "Just try not too miss, and don't break your legs on the station." With a slight buzz, muted when they both flicked the valves sealed the final line in their suits, the airlock door hissed open, letting them back into the tiny room with two outside exits. The one they were facing now closed circularly, like an iris, and had a similar keypad on its side as the one behind them now.

"Alright, locked and loaded, and ready to launch some kids through space at a multiple-billion-dollar piece of junk. Depressurizing… Now." Another hiss they couldn't hear, but this time they saw the faint tendrils of rapid air leaving into the thin vents at their feet. "No light-headedness? Bleeding? Nothing like that?"

"All good." Kim replied.

"Clear here," called Ron.

"Guess those suits work after all. Good luck you two."

A second later the light on the keypad flashed green, and the door slid open into the vacuum of space. It was an automatically dizzying experience, when the gravity plating switched off and they were left floating in the zero gravity it left behind.

Even after having been in space before, the vast emptiness, and absurdly authentic presence of it, was humbling even to the teen heroes. It stretched on for infinity, all just a foot away, all lying at their feet just outside the door. Thousands of stars sparkled in their view alone, and as Kim took her first step, she could see the faint ring of orbiting trash towards the planet beneath them.

"Cables," she warned Ron, quickly pulling the clip from her belt's winch and snapping it to one of Janice's handholds. The miniature winch system was perhaps the only thing more painful to sit on than the kimmunicator, as she'd learned from experience over the last hour of flying.

She could only trust Ron to have clipped onto the ship as well, and thumbed the keypad built into the opposite side of her belt, switching on the magnetic strips built into her boots. With a physical _thump_, she landed on Janice's side, the rounded 'wings' of the smoothly gliding vessel, and took off in a bulky run, enough on the side to see the planet over her shoulder.

"Right behind you, KP!" Ron said through a quick burst of static. It sounded like he was already winded, probably from even moving in the old suit. With her luck, he was still struggling to get out of the hatch, or even worse, already floating off into space, in the wrong direction.

But she knew she needed her focus, and didn't dare to look backwards to check on her friend. Her clumping gait had nearly taken her to the end of Janice now, just passing one of the triple bulbs that covered the workstations. She could see Harper out of the corner of her gaze as well, sitting comfortably in the rounded protrusion that served as a cockpit.

The edge of the ship sloped off and rounded back beneath her, which she almost hadn't counted on. It was still possible, but her timing and slant needed to be just that much more perfect to make it. In the distance the space station was hardly the size of her thumb. All she needed to do was jump from Janice, disable her magnetic boots before they so much as altered her thrust, and do the equivalent of hitting a piece of straw with a bb gun from practically a mile away.

"No big," She told herself aloud, occupying the disturbing silence of her helmet that was only broken my her occasional huff. Making it this far shouldn't have been a problem, but she wasn't counting on fighting her boots every step of the way either.

As soon as she started down the slope, she focused her eyes just past the station and jumped, thumbing the pad for her boots as soon as her feet left the ground. The tether behind her was already halfway used up, giving her just another half a ship-length before she would have to disconnect it, and risk flying wide and into space, or let it bound and pull herself back to Janice's safety. Anything in the middle, and her bounce would be tether less, and in the complete opposite direction.

But her jump felt smooth, at least as far as she could feel in space. The disconcerting feeling of not being able to feel her surroundings was still edging at her, as well as the fact that her organs were floating randomly in her body, and everything felt like it was flowing backwards. It was one of the things she hated about space. Even Ron, though he wasn't a good comparison in the first place, had sounded like he threw up a little when the gravity plating went off.

Another quarter of her tether gone, and she still couldn't tell whether she was flying straight, or if she was aimed just slightly too high. She couldn't move her head enough to see the line, still reeling backwards on the winch strapped to the back of her belt, but she felt like it was getting close.

"What I wouldn't give for rocket boots right now," She muttered. With one hand, she pushed down hard on the side of the reel. She couldn't feel it click or not, the gloves felt like a layer of rubber around her hands, but another dozen meters later and she was still floating straight. As she got closer, she could see clearly that she was about a foot too high. It wasn't too bad because the familiar circular shape of Drakken's hovercraft was still in her way, but if it hadn't been she would float right past.

"No kidding, KP. Feels like I have anvils in my feet." Ron replied, practically a minute after Kim had spoken. Every other word was paused for a sharp breath, which she counted as a good sign since he hadn't flown away yet. It still meant he was less than halfway across Janice though.

"Oh, snap," Kim hissed, as close as she could bring herself to a curse.

Ron, still puffing, called worriedly, "What? What's wrong?"

"I'm going to hit the top of Drakken's hover-" Before she could finish she did, bouncing off the rounded glass-like dome that covered the top of his two-seater. Her hands gripped wildly at it, the rough texture on the palm doing its best to slow her. All it managed was to turn her around, flipping her feet with her head, and tilting her towards it.

That was just enough for her boots to pull her the rest of the way, but not enough to alter her trajectory to hit the dormant hovercraft. She ended up twisting through space, arms flailing as much as they could in the spacesuit. Luckily the ship hadn't strayed any from the docking pylon.

Kim hit the pylon hard, smacking down bad enough she could feel her tailbone and the sensitive skin behind her liver bruise. She couldn't see, or even feel, the station beneath her fire a quick burst of it's stabilizing rockets, but the hovercraft above her didn't stray any further from her sight.

"KP! You okay?" Ron asked through the static.

A quick check made sure that her feet had connected to the station, and she hadn't broken anything on herself, or beneath her. "Yeah, no big." She replied as she stood, pushing herself and letting her drift straight.

Sometime or another she'd gotten herself turned around, something that was more than easy to do when up could just as easily be behind you as above you. The long tube used for docking and as an airlock, which she had originally thought to be on the top side, was actually facing down towards the earth. She was still standing on it, and looking away from the bright blue orb showed the sixteen identical solar panels, half on each side, stretching away like a dragonfly's wings.

"Alright, just have to go through the Pirs dock and reach the Destiny labs," Kim told herself. She wasn't exactly sure about the names, but from what Wade had told her originally, that was the space-lab Doctor Drakken had been trying to open for the past several hours already. "Piece of cake."

Turning back down towards the planet, Kim jogged her best down the side of the Pirs docking compartment. As soon as she hit the end, she reached down, grasping hold of the corner of the airlock, and flipped into a complete full circle.

"Oh, wow," She managed breathlessly. Looking down from where she was hand-standing, she could see the entire planet sprawled out beneath her feet, like she could just let go and fall through the sparse clouds that covered the western hemisphere. The entire image was surreal, looking down at the Americas, and parts of Europe. She could make out the Rockies, and the Grand Canyon to their east, even a small dot along the east coast she could just imagine was New York.

But now was the time to be saving the world, not enjoying it. Without another glance, she bent the rest of her weight, shifted her hands, and used her frictionless motion to bring her feet down on the rounded bottom of the airlock. What she expected was another Global Justice keypad, but reaching down for her belt didn't give her the kimmunicator she used to open those. Not to mention what she found looked far more like a safe than it did any airlock she'd ever been through.

"Wade, I need some help here." She called into her helmet, receiving only static.

The person who answered wasn't Wade, but the twitchy pilot she could hardly see from the corner of her vision, "Probably can't get radio without tapping it through NASA's communications. I can help, you know." As Harper spoke, Janice drifted beneath the station, far over Kim's head, and under her feet. She could make out the familiar image of Ron's spacesuit still attached to the hull still.

"I need someone to open the airlock so I can get inside." Kim said, still looking down at the complicated safe at her feet.

The static kept her company for another minute as she tried the various handles attached to the door, not managing to budge a single one. "Alright, it should open up in just a second." Harper informed her.

"Spankin'. Should I like, get off it or something?"

"Eh, I wouldn't worry about it, might want to grab onto something so it doesn't catapult you to the stratosphere though. Harper out." The scientist called, cutting off with another hiss of static. Seconds later, Kim was left in the abysmally empty void that occupied her helmet. No doubt Ron hadn't even noticed he'd turned his radio off, or even knew how he had it on in the first place.

It took only another minute for the hatch to hiss the last of it's air out, barely visible against the shimmering white of the station, and pop loose. It didn't try to buck her off though, instead sticking against the thick seals inside. Kim had to pry it open the rest of the way, pulling as hard as she could with her hands, and pushing the same way with her feet, before it finally opened.

She climbed in and shut it, spinning the wheel it offered on the door until she could feel it strain against her hands, suitably tightened. That just left her with looking for the handle to the other, similarly thick and confusing, door on its opposite side.

Several minutes later, and after having found out that none of the handles, levers, or buttons around did anything remotely useful to the door, Kim's oxygen indicator flashed blue. Blue, as far as she knew, meant that the cabin she was inside was filling up with air, which just left her another several minutes to wait until it was finished.

_In which time Drakken grabs the drive, busts out of here, and warps us all to a different galaxy_, Kim thought with a huff. She would parachute over this any day. In fact, she'd rather parachute from this. One way or another it'd still be faster.

She was partway into her thoughts and more than frustrated enough when the hatch finally hissed and popped open. It was just another struggle against the seal before she was out and into the cramped tubes of the space station.

"Let's see, they said it was to the… Left. But wait, what side did they expect me to open the hatch from?" Kim looked left, through the thin connecting tube, and then right, through a mirror image. "They could've at least given me a door number." Kim muttered as she removed her helmet, keeping the pure oxygen breath mask on.

Checking the left tube didn't reveal anything amazing, so she curled up in the tube and pushed herself down the opposite way. She swam gracefully, using her hands more than her feet to crawl along the walls and push herself from handhold to handhold. That part was actually sort of fun, compared to the spacewalking or waiting in a tube.

Finally, down the forth tube she checked, she found her arch-foe and his sarcastic sidekick. They weren't still breaking into the lab as NASA first reported though.

"No, Shego! Twist it." Drakken fumed. "Not that way, the other way."

Shego bit down a snarl and glared at the man over the massive box of wires and tubes, with what looked to be a circular generator in the center. "Which way? Clockwise or counterclockwise?" She huffed, barely able to contain her anger now.

"Clockwise!" Drakken yelled, pushing harder against his side of the drive.

Shego twisted it clockwise, while Drakken had the same plan over on his side. "Wait a second. Your clockwise, or mine?"

Drakken leaned over the drive, panting but too tired to try for now. He had managed to imprison himself in the smallish Destiny Lab module, trying to push the drive out as it was. The drive core Harper and James had invented was too large for the entryway though, and in the last three hours they'd pushed it all of halfway through, with the rest of the time spent opening the door without Shego's skills.

"Need some help?" Kim asked from behind Shego, floating in the middle of the tube with her arms crossed over her chest.

Shego whirled around, a sneer on her face. "As a matter of fact," She growled, lighting both hands with sudden flickers of green plasma, "No!"

"Shego! No plasma, you don't want to damage the instruments!" Drakken yelled. All he could do was reach one hand hopelessly through the tiny opening the drive had left, but Shego let the green flames die anyway.

She had no idea how any of the stuff on the station worked, but she wasn't going to find out what happened if it didn't work just yet. "Alright. You and me, Princess, hand to hand."

Kim raised her hands up, palms flat for quick chops and jabs. She didn't show it, and neither did Shego, but she wasn't used to fighting in this environment. Everything worked different when your feet could just as easily be where your head was.

"Gladly. No plasma?"

"No sidekick?"

Both women nodded determinedly, one smirking, the other staring down her opponent with pursed lips. Kim was already braced for the upcoming attack, and Shego was coiling her legs against the wall behind her. "Deal," They said together, a second before the two impacted like a freight train against a steel barricade.

Drakken pulled his hand from the opening, kicking the drive core in a childish fit. The kick not only stubbed his toe, but sent him pirouetting about in the cramped lab.

The inept hunk of metal had beat him, for now. But people didn't call him the brilliant Doctor Drakken for nothing, and he had a plan for this nuisance.

Scraps of metal, combinations of screws, bolts, nuts, and all forms of wiring and casings, floated through the confines of the station. They bounced off the walls, slowing them slightly, but never stopping except for the few that lodged themselves behind instruments and tubing.

It looked like a spaceship had exploded inside the station, which made Ron very uneasy that he had taken off the clunky suit of space armor he'd been cursing for the past half an hour. Off to one side of the station he could hear the telltale sounds of heated combat, not-so-feminine grunts and growls. Every once in a while, it sounded like a car hitting a person, or vice versa, when Shego or Kim would launch the other into a wall like a bullet.

Despite having lost contact with Kim over half an hour ago, Harper assured him she was already inside anyway, she didn't seem to be doing any worse than if she'd just started a fight. At least, it seemed that way to him. He'd never really got Kim and Shego's fascination with fighting anyway, or the subtle nuances the two seemed to pick up from each other.

He did know his part in this play though, and that was to find and stop her most prolific rival, Doctor Drakken. With that in mind he set off away from the two fighters, and towards the source of the debris-field that was starting to get on his nerves and in his hair.

Picking another stray bolt from his blonde tresses, Ron crawled his way across the floor, or roof, and into the adjoining compartment. From there, he picked was way through the debris and down into another junction, with what seemed to be an airlock off to one side. Larger pieces, supports and crossbeams that were still slightly smaller than his arms, filled this junction. The smaller pieces had already ricocheted themselves into other wings of the station, which suited him just fine. Ron already had a screw nudged between his shoulder blades, and that alone was going to drive him nuts for hours.

It took little time to find the source of the wreckage, still wedged in the door that lead to the Destiny laboratory. The drive core, at least it looked like what Ron thought one might look like, had been practically torn in half. It looked surprisingly like something had burrowed through a corner of it; disconnecting tubes, unscrewing all manners of bolts, and removing large portions of the protective frames to form a perfect half-circle, just large enough for a grown man.

"Well, so much for stealing this," Ron muttered, peaking inside the lab once to make sure it was clear. Sure enough, the entire section of the station was still lifeless, and Drakken was nowhere to be seen.

The blonde crawled back through the junctions, checking the corners he hadn't turned down just in case. He was headed back to help Kim, which seemed to be the only thing he could do, but Drakken was still no where to be seen, and that was starting to unnerve him.

When he finally found her, she and Shego were still in the middle of their fight, eyes set on only each other. The two were bouncing around at one of the far ends of the station, giving Ron the opportunity to search every compartment he could find, before he finally got to the galley where they were situated.

Both women, now bruised and bleeding from practically every bit of skin visible, were relying entirely on the walls around them to fuel their attacks. They would bounce to the nearest wall, build the tension into their legs, then spring themselves at the other and launch as many attacks as they could, arms and legs a blur just to get any hits off.

After half an hour of a standstill, Kim had finally gained the upper hand. With a particularly devastating roundhouse kick, Shego was sent flying back across the galley, ricocheting off the wall and straight into Kim's follow-up clothesline.

It wasn't enough to take her out, or even enough to injure her beyond some minor whiplash, but it was just enough to suspend Shego in the air. Kim jumped back, latching herself to the nearest handrail, as Shego started to flail wildly. Just seconds in she let out a frustrated grunt, crossing her arms over her chest. She glared at Kim, who only smirked back.

"KP! Nice shot," Ron shouted, sounding overly exuberant. He floated over beside the redhead, clapping her on the back once.

Only then did Kim actually turn to face him though. Until then she'd been practically ignoring Ron, and even now her eyes never left Shego, returning the villainess' glare and then some. "Thanks, Ron. Did you catch Drakken?"

Ron chuckled sheepishly. "Yeah, about that. I couldn't find him."

"What?" Kim shouted, wheeling on Ron. She shot Shego a hot glare when she caught her smirking from the corner of her eyes. "He was trapped in the laboratory just a few minutes ago."

"Yeah, well he isn't now. I went over the entire station, and he isn't here. Harper would have said something if he saw Drakken's ship moving anyway," Ron said. He was looking more for instructions than excuses.

"Wait, if he's not on the station, and he's not on his ship…" Her eyes widened, and she looked at Ron. "Did Harper dock?"

"Yeah, we docked at the Quest just a few minutes ago. Why?" Kim slipped past him, entirely ignoring him and Shego, while realization slowly set in.

Shego chuckled where she was floating, though Ron didn't notice that bit by bit, she was approaching the table beneath her. "Didn't think that one through, now did you?" Without saying a word to acknowledge the henchwoman he turned and followed his friend, slipping quietly through the next hatch. "What, you're not even going to help me out here?" She shouted behind them.

With her free hand Kim drew her kimmunicator, tapping directly into Janice's channel as she floated through the station. Her breath had never settled since the start of her fight, and now even seemed to pick up a bit. Without Janice they were stuck, and even worse, her father had trusted her with that ship.

"Harper, come in. We think someone might have just snuck onboard." She spurted out quickly, still not stopping to take a breath. It was much easier when you could relax at full speed, anyway.

"Oh, everything's safe here, Kimberly." Her kimmunicator called back, and she stopped at the next junction to glare at it. The voice was poorly disguised, sounding more like an old woman than a young scientist. "No need to check up on me."

"Doctor Drakken," She growled, all too dramatic.

"Bah! You think you're all that, Kim Possible? Well you just brought me what I was trying to steal, and then some! We'll see who's all that now," The doctor said, cackling loudly right after.

Kim could just barely hear the voice in the background, shouting, "Wait, you don't know what you're doing!"

"Ron, get Harper!" Kim shouted. She launched back into action, speeding through the next two junctions in two jumps, and then launching herself up through the large double-compartment of the Quest airlock. It had been rigged to stay open, which left only the more modern door of Janice's airlock in the way.

She flew easily through the compartment and promptly face-planted when she passed into Janice's gravitational pull. In just seconds her blood rushed back through her body, filling her head as she foolishly tried to stand, and pumping through her limbs loud enough for her to hear it. The dizzying circles the airlock was making made her want to vomit, and she felt bile rise in her throat.

"Oww."

"You good, KP?" Ron asked as he floated in behind her, quickly making the same mistake. He tumbled into a pile beside her in the airlock while she was already standing, steadying herself with one of the handholds on the side of the door. Ron could hardly push himself up.

"I'm good. This can't be good for us though."

Ron rose to his elbows, raising an index finger, "Agreed," He managed, before passing out altogether. Kim, resting almost all her weight against the handrail, looked down and gave an annoyed huff.

"Ron…" It really wasn't unexpected though, but watching him faint, pass out, or lose his pants at all the wrong moments wasn't getting old to her. Especially when he was supposed to be protecting a scientist from a certain mad one.

Turning back to the task at hand, Kim pressed the largest and most bottom-wise of buttons on the keypad. Thankfully it wasn't locked, and the electronic door slid open with no trouble, leaving her back in the main hub of the ship. The first thing she noticed was Harper, tied up in a corner with a nasty bruise developing on his temple. The second was Drakken sitting at the pilot's main console, looking over the various buttons, readouts, and levers with a raised eyebrow.

"Let's see, if this is the main ignition, and this is the manual-pilot, then which one is to undock…" Drakken muttered, just loud enough for her to make out. "Well, when all else fails. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe," He sung, hovering his fingers over the control pads.

Kim had made it halfway across the hall by then, stealthily slipping by him on her way to Harper. The ruffled, and rather handsome in the right light, scientist was hardly stirring in his bonds. But just as she was about to reach him, only a few feet left, he slumped further against the wall and let out a groan to protest his throbbing head.

Kim froze, and Drakken snuck a look over his shoulder at his captive, before turning back to his console. It was nothing to worry about, just his prisoner and red-headed foe. _Foe?_

She was still standing stock still, hoping he would just pass it off as a trick of his mind, when he rose from his seat and swung in a circle. He pointed a single, overdramatic, finger at her, shouting, "Kim Possible!"

_Just like old times._ "Doctor Drakken," She growled, falling into her fighting stance once again. "You're not going to get away with this."

Drakken took a step out of the pilot's niche, scanning the room for anything he could use. Shego would be perfect, but instead he saw a limp, blond, form sitting out in the airlock. "Of course I will, you'll be too busy saving your sidekick, after all."

"Ron?" Kim asked incredulously.

Drakken nodded, a vicious smile gracing his face. "Of course. With this button," Drakken started, flicking a safety-cover off a wide silver switch, "This ship will detach from the space station. Anyone caught out in the airlock will be released into space." Drakken let off a long maniacal laugh, only what could be expected from him, and Kim's mind raced into overtime.

A quick look told her that Ron was still passed out, Harper was still bound, though still regaining consciousness, and Drakken was really threatening to flip the switch. Her boyfriend came first, of course, but she wasn't going to go home telling her dad that she'd handed over his priceless spaceship to her worst enemy. That left one option, stop Drakken. Hopefully Janice would have a brief warm-up period where she could stop the ship from detaching too.

She looked into his shark's smile, still grinning toothily at her with a hand over the switch. It could have just as easily been a missile launcher, with the yellow-striped cover, but she couldn't risk that either. "_Hasta la vista_, Buffoon."

Kim rushed, and he flicked the switch, already halfway to him by the time it rested in the opposite position. Seeing the cheerleader rush him made him very nervous though, no longer the false façade of exuberant bravery that he had been; he cowered and jumped out of the way instead. It gave Kim just enough time to make it to the console by the time the lights dimmed, now tinted red and giving the entire ship a 'Red Alert' feel.

The doors hadn't closed though, and besides the slight mist that was shooting from the vents, the ship hadn't even moved. _Success_! She thought triumphantly, flicking the switch back into its resting position.

The mist, the lights, and now a dull droning from the back of the ship. It all stayed where it was, and nothing seemed to revert like she hoped it would.

"**Priming engines. Drive core powering. Ship will enter slipstream in One Minute.**" It was Janice's cold, mechanical, voice again. But now it was filtered through the entirety of the ship, echoing in from the rooms opposite them as well.

She turned to see Drakken's eyes darting from spot to spot, fear apparent in his quivering lips and face. He returned her angry glare with a apologetic smile. Harper stirred behind them.

"**Ship will enter slipstream in Fifty Seconds.**" Janice informed them. It was just enough to wake Harper from his slumber, and his eyes cracked open to the voice. It was more than apparent that he was still disoriented though.

"Slipstream?" He mumbled. His eyes shot open, and he threw a hand to his face to grasp his throbbing temple. "Oww. Slipstream? No, no! That's bad."

"Harper, get up here and stop this!" Kim shouted back.

He almost pulled himself to his feet, before slumping back to his wall with flailing arms. "You have to… I-" He clutched his head a little more, eyes scrunching in concentration. "I can't remember."

Drakken gave another sheepish smile, and a dry chuckle. "I might have given him a slight concussion."

Kim's frustrated death-glare was his reply, besides an angry snarl. "The ship will create a miniature wormhole around it. It'll rip the I-S-S right out of space if it's too close."

"**Forty Seconds.**"

"And you can't stop it?" Kim asked. She felt like her heart was going to beat out of her chest. Normally this was a thrill, but she was surrounded by technology that she didn't even understand, and two scientists that couldn't even help.

"I don't even know who I am right now." Harper hissed. "You can detach her. I remember that! The knob, just above your left shoulder."

Kim turned around, slumping into the pilot's chair. It was her first time sitting here, and the entire thing overwhelmed her. Dozens of screens, each with their own controls, spread out like a dome above her head. Many were on mechanical arms, but the knob, a little pull-lever she could swear she'd seen on a bus before, was easy enough to spot. "This one?" She asked, grasping it firmly.

"Yes! Wait!" Harper managed to get himself onto his knees, at least. "If you pull it, you'll only have ten seconds to get out. You have to set the port thrusters right after."

Kim nodded, swallowing her tongue. "Alright. Drakken, get Harper and Ron out of here." To that, he nodded.

"**Twenty Seconds.**"

Kim bit her tongue in her mouth. "It's the console right over your knees, I think. Just hit the port arrow, and run for it."

"Okay. Go!"

The two shuffled out as quickly as they could, slowing only momentarily to lift Ron and throw him through the zero-gravity hatch. She watched, and waited, until she saw them disappear.

"**Fifteen Seconds.**"

"I know!" Without wasting another second, she pulled the knob down hard, quickly seeking out the left-most arrow on the screen Harper had told her about. She pushed, and was rewarded with a monitor above her flaring to life, a little bar that looked like it could have just as easily represented health, filling up a section towards the left side.

She pushed out of the chair, making a mad dash for the port airlock. It was in mid-step towards it that she heard Drakken call, "Shego, wait!"

_Shego? Just great._ As soon as she turned the corner, Shego was there staring at her. The villainess had a feral glare on her face, hands burning the bright-green of her plasma. Her nose was still bent, turning a bloated purple, from the clothesline blow Kim had caught her with.

"**Ten Seconds.**"

"Shego, we don't have time for this." Kim pleaded quickly.

Her rival wasn't having any of it though. "Leaving me there is going to be your last mistake, Princess." She growled. Without another word she pounced, arms high, like a cat attacking a ball of yarn. It was all to easy Kim to counter though, just rolling onto her back, grasping Shego's wrists, and kicking her up and over with her own forward motion.

She jumped to her feet, but Shego was still just as fast. Instead of being on her feet, Shego was on her hands, kicking out towards Kim's head with both her feet. That, Kim had to counter with her wrists, pushing her momentum to the side.

After her counter, Kim had just enough time to duck around her rival, jumping at the airlock, just as it slid closed. She hit the door hard with her shoulder, bouncing right off and back into the ship.

"**Five Seconds**."

In a short two seconds, Kim managed to pound on the door, hit the 'open' button, and pull as hard as she could on the manual latch. Just after, she was brought back into her current predicament by another quick jab from Shego, that she just hardly managed to push away.

The ship's automatic systems detached the docking ring just before the thrusters fired, opening the stark-white airlock to the harsh darkness of space. The air that was inside had no choice but to flee out, escaping in a quick spurt of mist from the vents, before they too closed.

All this was lost to the two women inside, still trading blows right outside the airlock. The lights had dimmed even more, and they relied more on the dark-red reflecting off the white steam to see, bathing the entire cabin in an eerie glow.

In the final second they jumped apart, crouching and coiling, before the two launched at each other. Both were posed midair in a jump-kick; Shego, slightly too high and sideways, was off by centimeters, and it would have been clear that Kim would hit first and harder from her better angle.

Deeper down inside Janice's belly, the drive-core had been warming up for some time, a mass of wires, tubes, and mechanical riff-raff far from the prying lights and consoles. For the last minute, it had been letting off a uncharacteristic blue glow, slowly growing from just a slight shimmer, to a full-blown flare.

At the last second, the space around it began to ripple, like a rock hitting a pond's surface. They stretched away from it, bending the metal that held it, the air around it, even the space outside the ship's aft. It rippled farther and farther, encompassing the ship, while Shego and Kim still posed, mid-air, ready to kick each other.

Time slowed, and had either of them had the mind for it, they would have noticed the sudden sluggish feel to the air, to themselves. They were approaching centimeter-by-centimeter, but their brains were running just as slow, never noticing the changes that surrounded the ship, or invaded the instruments.

Just as the two were about to collide, time finally stopped. Janice, much to the horror of the occupants of the space station, watching from their tiny viewports, folded into itself and vanished.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** No, I wasn't taking a break. I was trying to update Canadian Wedding, which turned into a rather bad case of writer's block. I also ended up writing the beginning of three different stories, but decided not to keep them. I already have enough on my plate as is. is being rather odd, too, since I can't change the first part of this chapter to not be bold or italic. Most of this was written rather mindlessly, actually, which doesn't all bode well with me. In fact, I'm not exactly sure what I wrote here... But feel free to read and review, and tell me what you think of what I wrote. The next update will come sooner than this one did. **~VLU**

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**Standard Disclaimer:** I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.

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Cold couldn't begin to describe what Kim and Shego felt, like a sudden chill passing down their spines in the course of a millisecond, only so quick it seemed ten times worse. It rushed through their nerves, so powerful that their bodies locked, muscles contracting in short spasms. The sudden rush bordered on erotic, almost orgasmic, but lasted no longer than the fraction of a second it took for Kim to run into Shego.

The two bounced off each other, Kim's awkward kick jabbing hard into Shego's side, nothing spectacular of itself. The sudden power that flowed behind it, as time sprung back like a rubber band, was surprising though. They didn't so much bounce off each other, as shoot across the room like a red and black bullet, Kim hitting the airlock at her back, and Shego crumpling into the wall on the far side.

The lights came to first, the red emergency lighting returning, dimmed by half, to illuminate just the barest fraction of the mist that rose from the vents around them. Finally, after several minutes, Kim stirred with a groan.

She gripped the back of her head and moaned, finding her hair matted with a familiar stickiness. Blood, she figured. It was impossible to tell if it followed a concussion though, or if she'd just hit a corner and split the skin.

_Okay… What the hell was that?_ With the fog clearing from her mind, she quickly repeated their short fight over in her mind. Everything had started off fine, they traded jabs and kicks, danced around each other, and launched at each other for opposing jump-kicks- Then it got weird. She could recall the chill, still too fresh on her mind to forget, and recall hitting Shego. But the force behind that simple kick had been astounding.

She quickly put together the last part of the puzzle, the part that had chimed in the midst of their fight. _Zero…_ It had something to do with the 'slipstream', obviously, which meant that it was Drakken's fault, and Shego's too.

_Shego…_ She thought with a growl. She rubbed her head once more, taking to her feet, and peered through the dim red mist for her rival. _Not there._

A quick scan told her that she was alone, and the woman in question wasn't in the pilot's seat, or any of the upper consoles. But without sticking her face out far enough for Kim to see, the redhead figured she could easily slip out of sight.

With that in mind, she slipped back into the shadows, ducking out of the main room and heading through the odd circular hatch that Harper had mentioned leading to the crew quarters. Glancing at the door as she passed through it told her that it had an odd little portico canopy, which was a very odd addition to a state of the art spacecraft.

"**Warning: Primary core power critical, secondary core power routed to life systems.**" Janice called over the intercom.

_I am so going to kill you for this one, Shego_, Kim thought, hardly glancing up as Janice spoke. The computer didn't sound particularly worried, so she put it off as a secondary concern, behind throttling Shego, and continued stalking quietly up the corridor.

The hallway wasn't odd of itself, one door on the left that she figured would lead to the mess, and three on the right. But the rooms on the right, which she quickly poked through, were definitely built differently. Each one was a simple lounge, with a small room above and below it set up as bunks, or personal space. Probably as long and wide as the length of a coffin, with just four feet of clearance to move around.

_Interesting, not helpful though_, she told herself. At the end of the hallway was another room, long, wide, and built curved to fit in the back of the top of the ship. It, unlike the sparse other compartments, was filled to the top with boxes. Some of the crates looked far to heavy to lift by hand, even. More importantly, it was lighted by the barest emergency lights, and filled with hiding places.

She hadn't yet raised the question as to why Shego was running or hiding in the first place, but if this room was at the end of both hallways, both of which connected to the mess…

Kim dropped closer to the ground, slinking quietly, with the grace of a woman who'd not only aced gymnastics and cheerleading, but had quietly entered hundreds of evil lairs. Entering a room unnoticed was nothing-

Shego's feet caught her hard in the side, before she even heard the _whish_ of displaced air. The villain was hanging from a rail on the roof as Kim fell back, taking a stack of boxes out where she crashed. She recovered before the boxes even hit the ground, but was still surprised that Shego had been waiting right above her the entire time. Above her! And of all the times she'd watched a movie and laughed at the antagonist for not looking up…

"Now," Shego started, stalking around Kim, "I don't know what you're trying to pull here, Pumpkin, but I do know this: They're going to be taking you down to Earth on a stretcher."

Across from her, Kim had matched Shego's feet, like to hunters stalking their prey, forming a tight circle between the pillars of crates. "What _I'm_ trying to pull?" She scoffed, "I was trying to stop this-"

"Stop what?" Shego growled.

It was true, Kim mused, that nothing had really happened that was easily noticeable. Besides a bit of cold, and something that could've well come from the gravity plating acting up. "This…" She growled in frustration, at her failure for remembering the word 'slipstream', and for not knowing what it was in the first place.

Now it was Kim's turn to scowl in frustration, while Shego smirked. She was still frustrated from Shego's interference, and from failing to stop whatever the countdown was, but Shego had learned long ago that she could judge a situation from Kim's expressions. _Nothing to it, beat Kimmie around some, be back in time for dinner_.

Shego launched at her rival with a satisfied smirk plastered to her face, coming up just inches short as Kim backpedaled. There was no plasma, but Kim's style had always been more gymnastic, relying heavily on her school training, and both of them knew that Shego could easily overpower her when there was no room to maneuver. As she backed up through the lane between the crates, she caught two punches and a kick from Shego, deflecting them away and trying for a quick strike of her own.

By several more feet, Kim was sporting two thick scratches on her jaw, blood dripping from where Shego's claws had got her, and Shego had the urge to rub a deep bruise Kim had given her shoulder. It felt like it hit all the way down to the bone. But, much to Shego's dismay, neither of them had counted on Kim's suit being so resilient. Her suit was designed to take debris, shooting through space, while Shego had dressed for the indoors.

They broke several minutes into their fight, where Kim limped back into a smaller lane, splitting the crates on either side of the walkway. Shego backed up to take stock of her options, most of which counted on taking advantage of Kim's leg, which had been jarred earlier, but was quickly growing worse with every kick she attempted. The suit was too thick to cut through with her claws alone, but she was uneasy about taking advantage of her like that. Something about it seemed cheap, more so than normal.

"Just where do you think you're going?" Shego called, peering between the crates to find Kim limping off behind them, down another walkway. "Not many places to run on a spaceship, you know."

"I'm not running," Kim called back. From what Shego could hear, she was resting behind a stack of smaller crates.

"Well I see that." She smirked. Annoying Kim was one of her precious few past times, and by far her favorite. "What's wrong, Kimmie, hurt yourself on my ribs?" She whirled around the boxes, claws raised to strike, but found no sign of the girl. "That did hurt, y'know. I think you cracked one of them."

"Boohoo," Kim cried sarcastically. _Checkmate_.

In the half second that Kim called out from behind Shego, she got one arm around her neck, and was promptly flipped over Shego's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She landed several feet away, between another stack of crates, with the painful feeling that her shoulder had nearly been wrenched out of it's socket. More importantly, she'd underestimated the woman's strength, and that, plus a possible several head injuries, was enough to leave her dazed, upside down, against a crate.

"You didn't actually think I would fall for that?" Shego laughed. She took a few steps forward, leaning down to peer into the upside-down hero's eyes. "Look, Princess, you can fight me to a deadlock all you want in the big wide somewhere. But you try to fight me with this-" She paused, grabbing hold of Kim's leg. The redhead let out a hiss of pained breath. "And you're asking to lose."

The expression on Kim's face told Shego all she needed to know; grating teeth and frustrated tears that refused to admit defeat. "You know, you're a real bad loser, Kimmie. Give it up, I won, congratulate me."

She smiled down at the frustrated scowl Kim was still giving her. "What's wrong, cat got your tongue?" With a grunt, Kim swung her good foot down, connecting right on the bridge of Shego's nose, who reeled back, holding it with both hands. "Ah fu-" Movement out of the corner of her eye paused her swear, and she threw a hasty bolt of plasma at where Kim was attempting to run off to.

The clatter of crates toppling filled the room after the miniature explosion. The entire pathway Kim had tried ducking through caved in around her, pouring heavy metal crates, filled to the brim with nameless items, over the hero before she could escape.

"That wasn't nice," Shego scowled, sounding far more nasally with her swollen nose in one hand. She glared at the hero, her injured form sticking half out on the main walkway, but refused to show any pain over the injury.

There was a trickle of blood where Kim had face-planted, knocking the redhead out cold, and kicking the boxes showed them to be far to heavy for the teen to lift. They did a pretty good job of trapping her back too, which would be quite painful when the girl awoke.

"Now, I really don't like just leaving you here," Shego said, dropping down beside Kim and pulling a handkerchief from beneath the zipper of her catsuit. She silently dabbed the blood that dripped down from Kim's nose and mouth. "I just can't trust you not to kick me in the nose, apparently. So here you stay."

The villain stood, leaving the heroine trapped behind the boxes behind her. She made it to the end of the hallway before she caught sight of a odd window from the corner of her eyes. The view of space, while beautiful and majestic in its own right, wasn't what caught her gaze though, it was the image inside it.

She had to do a double-take just to make sure she saw what she thought she did, at first passing it off as a trick of her mind. Next, she held a hand to her head just to make sure Kim hadn't knocked anything important around, then she checked behind her, to find Kim still passed out cold on the grates that served as a walkway.

She looked back at the window just to see the same image, a reflection of the redhead herself, looking far less beaten than the one left in her wake. Just was just standing there, stock-still, practically frozen, staring back at Shego with the olive-green eyes that Shego could liken to her own. She looked tired though, weary, and much older than the girl behind her. Having been a heroine before, Shego knew just how much saving the world could take out of her, how much of her soul it could destroy before she had enough. It was probably what Shego likened to her soul, a tired older woman.

But Kim, like a younger form of herself, had held up better than Shego had expected. That didn't mean she deserved any of this, though, not in the least, and it certainly didn't mean she didn't deserve some help once in a while.

"So, conscience, we meet again?" Shego greeted the reflection. A clatter to her side, between her and the door, shook her out of her staring contest. The boxes, in front of the door she'd been heading for, had toppled over, some looking heavy enough to crush her flat. She almost jumped, but settled with tensing slightly, and untensing when she saw nothing there.

She turned back to the window, only to find nothing there either, just herself, staring back where Kim had been. "I swear, it'd be so much easier if I didn't have to deal with you," She huffed at her conscience, before turning back to the sleeping heroine.

* * *

"Wow, I really have to stop passing out," Kim muttered sarcastically, cracking her eyes open. She could feel the lump on her forehead even without touching it, which went well with the bloodied mass of hair on the back of her head. She knew, without even looking, that she was tied up, and tied good too.

Her good arm was tied to her good leg, which went all the way under her seat. Above them, her bad arm was tied tightly to her chest, while her bad leg was tethered to one of the consoles above the pilot's seat. Another chord wrapped from her bad arm, under her to her other limbs.

All-in-all, if she attempted to fall out of her seat, she'd end up doing a very painful split on her jarred leg. Trying to cut through the chords binding her, with either of her good limbs, would wrench her shoulder out of its sling.

Weighing her options, and finding squat to work with, Kim decided to work on her captor instead. "You really know how to impress a lady. Do this often?"

"Only for you, Princess." Shego called back from beneath her. "Who knows? Maybe we can turn this into a special occasion."

Kim scoffed, and settled further into her seat. The way Shego had bound her did help, actually, serving as a makeshift sling for her leg and arm. Her other leg was going to get tired real fast though. "Really? How's that?"

"Well, by contract, I'm required to hand you off to Drakken." She explained, distracted by the pilot's controls. "But it doesn't state anywhere that I can't convince him to sell you off to Hench."

"Hench?" Kim practically choked on the shock of that.

Shego just nodded, still busy reviewing the controls. "Oh yeah. He'd pay big money for you, parade you in front of the other villains, try to sell you off to the next highest bidder…" She drifted off, then smirked wickedly. "Maybe even make you work for him."

Kim fervently shook her head at that, tousling her fiery red locks. She earned a laugh from Shego below her. "Never! Well, there was that one time, but never again."

"Don't you know, Kimmie? Hench is just a middleman. On one side he has the Hench Company, on another, the villains who hire him, and on the last, the mafia that owns him."

"Mafia?"

Shego nodded, just barely visible beneath the transparent flooring under the upper consoles. "Oh yeah, big name family on the east coast. They have ways of making you do things."

She looked positively appalled at that, gaping down at Shego. "You wouldn't!"

There was a pause, a rather dramatic pause that Shego let last far too long. After what seemed like forever, Shego broke out laughing. "Oh, come on, Princess! You know me better than that," She smiled up at Kim, her mission temporarily forgotten, "We'll just take you back to our lair, play around with you for a while… Badda bing, badda boom."

Her sultry smile was met with an unamused glower. "Not funny, Shego. I know saving the world isn't all fun and games, but you bring those lowlifes in and they'll start making it personal."

"I know," Shego consented, "I know. Just remember, Kimmie, you're mine."

"Yours?"

Shego ignored the question better than Kim ignored the joke. "And I took your watch, ring, and other valuables, so don't think you can cut your way out of this one." She went back to the console with a smile, while Kim hissed in anger above her.

Kim grumbled a bit more, and leaned back to rest again. She would never say it, but she was grateful for the seat, especially after being throttled. That definitely irked her, but her suspended good leg was even more frustrating. The muscle in her calf was getting tired, and to let it rest for just a second would pull her shoulder.

Finally, she couldn't resist the need to take her mind off the situation. "So, how's it going?"

She received a weary look for the trouble. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because," She sighed, "The sooner you land this thing, the sooner I can get out and kick your butt."

"Ass, Kimmie. The correct term is 'Kick your ass'." She went over the controls one more time, before leaning back in the chair with her own sigh. "And, since you're wondering, it's not going."

"Not?"

"Well, as far as I can tell, we're drifting through space." She smacked herself in the head, "Doy, no-brainer there. But I can't find any planets. I can't find anything." There was frustration in her tone, and Kim attempted to fight back the worry that was plaguing her. "If I could find a big blue or red ball in space, I could find our way home. But, I think we've drifted in a complete circle, and I can't even see a sun."

"God, I could really use Ron right now," Kim groaned. It didn't help knowing that Shego would be no help here.

"Missing your boyfriend already?" She asked, her tone surprisingly calm, perhaps even comforting, for a second.

The redhead chuckled mirthlessly. "Yeah. But he watched so much T-V, so much Space Passage…" She murmured.

"Space Passage?" Shego looked up, but Kim had already drifted off to sleep.

She woke with a start just seconds later. "God!" Kim hissed, tears prickling at her eyes from the sudden pain as her leg tugged her shoulder down.

"You be a nice girl, and I might let you rest that leg." Shego promised. "Now what's this have to do with Space Passage?"

Kim grumbled, rolling her head slightly. She looked exhausted, but more than that, the pain was wearing on her mind. She felt like passing out again at any second. "Everything… Harper-"

"Harper?"

"The guy who flew us out here," Kim muttered. "He said a lot of this was made from ideas on the show. The gravity plating, the core, the slipstream. Slipstream!" She shouted, surprising Shego more than a little. "That's the word I was thinking of. I was trying to stop the slipstream, and you came in."

Shego's mouth was agape. She'd watched plenty of Space Passage in her time, Commander Kane was a fox after all, but she was hoping Kim was wrong about this. "Slipstream?"

"Yeah. Harper said…" She drifted out again.

"Kimmie! Stay awake!" That brought the girl back. "What did Harper say?"

"He said, he said… He said that the ship would make a wormhole around it." She looked down at Shego with a confused frown. "I should know that word, 'wormhole'. I've heard it before…"

Shego bit her lip and turned away from the suddenly drowsy girl above her. She glanced out as space, eyes scanning the unfamiliar lights it held. Not only did she have a redheaded teen with definite signs of a concussion above her, but somehow she'd managed to get herself tangled up with wormholes and slipstream, just looking for another easy job.

_Steal the ship, Shego. It'll be a piece of cake_. She frowned, mostly directed at the imaginary red figure sitting over her left shoulder. _Yeah, right._

"Well, it'll at least be easier not having to drag your dead ass back home," She muttered, reluctantly sliding out of the pilot's seat. She headed through the alcove and up the ladder, stripping the chords away from Kim's good leg and arm when she reached her.

"Kim," She whispered, patting the redhead on the cheek. "Come on. Kimmie no sleepy." She groaned in response, flicking her eyes open for a half second, before passing out again.

"Great…" With a quick flick of her plasma, the chord suspending Kim's other leg snapped. She heaved the teen over her shoulders, starting back towards the ladder.

"Come on, let's get your lazy ass to whatever counts as the hospital here. Then we can focus on getting ourselves out of this mess."


End file.
